Joy in the House of Zacchaeus

A grown man in expensive clothes is halfway up a tree. His sandals are scuffed, his robe is snagged on a branch, and the whole street below is about to look up at him.

This is Jericho, an old city of palm trees and springs, green and warm, sitting low in the Jordan valley. Travellers to Jerusalem pass through it on the last stretch of the road up into the hills. And today the most talked-about traveller of all is coming through: Jesus of Nazareth. The streets are packed. Everyone wants to see him. Among the crowd is a man called Zacchaeus. Luke tells us two things about him. He was a chief tax collector, and he was rich. In those days tax collectors worked for the Romans and took a cut for themselves, often far more than they should. People did not just dislike them. They saw them as traitors and thieves. And Zacchaeus was not just a tax collector. He was the boss of tax collectors.

Zacchaeus wants to see who Jesus is. But there is a problem. He is short, and the crowd is not about to make room for him. Nobody in Jericho is going to do Zacchaeus a favour. So he does something undignified. He runs ahead along the road, finds a sycamore-fig tree with low, spreading branches, and climbs up into it. From there he will be able to see Jesus pass by, and perhaps nobody will notice him. Then Jesus comes to the place. And he stops. He looks up into the branches, straight at Zacchaeus, and he calls him by name. “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down, for today I must stay at your house.” Not someone else's house. Not the house of the most respected family in town. Today I must stay at yours.

Zacchaeus scrambles down as fast as he can. Luke says he welcomed Jesus joyfully. You can almost see him brushing off the leaves, grinning, leading the way home. But the crowd is not grinning. A grumble spreads through the street. “He has gone to be the guest of a man who is a sinner.” To them, this is shocking. A teacher of God should keep well away from people like Zacchaeus. Eating with someone meant welcoming them, being friends with them. And Jesus has chosen the one man in Jericho they would never have chosen.

Then Zacchaeus stands up. Maybe it is at the table, maybe at the door, with the crowd still muttering outside. And he says to Jesus, “Look, Lord, I am giving half of my possessions to the poor. And if I have cheated anyone of anything, I will pay it back four times over.” Nobody has told him to do this. Jesus has not given him a list of rules. Being welcomed has changed him. The man who spent his life taking now wants to give. And Jesus says, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.” Zacchaeus, the outsider, belongs again.

Zacchaeus's promise to repay four times was not a random number. The law of Moses said that a thief who stole a sheep and sold it must repay four sheep for it. Zacchaeus applies that strict penalty to himself, the kind of repayment a convicted thief would make. And Luke's word for his job, chief tax collector, appears nowhere else in the whole New Testament.

Joy in the house of Zacchaeus. You can read it in Luke chapter nineteen, verses one to ten. The baby born in Bethlehem grew up to be a man who came looking for the lost, even up a tree. And the joy of being found turned a taker into a giver. So here is a question to carry with you. When Jesus welcomed Zacchaeus, joy made him generous. Who could you surprise with generosity this Christmas?